Sudan’s Kordofan uprising possible – think tank
By Daniel Van Oudenaren
October 22, 2008 — The research organization International Crisis Group (ICG) released a report Tuesday warning that Southern Kordofan is still a potential flashpoint for further conflict in Sudan. The report indicates that a peaceful outcome is more likely if there is a change of course from local and national government figures, international donors and the UN Mission in Sudan.
“It is dangerously late but not yet too late to show the frontline populations that a new war is not the way to address their grievances,” says Francois Grignon, International Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director.
A renewed academic focus on Kordofan also inspired Small Arms Survey’s August Sudan Issue Brief, titled “The drift back to war: insecurity and militarization in the Nuba Mountains,” and a series of articles in August and September at the Social Science Research Council’s blog on Darfur.
Southern Kordofan, the homeland of primarily Misseriya Arabs and the Nuba people, is a state in Northern Sudan bordering both Darfur and the volatile Abyei region, and was highly contested during the war between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the government of Sudan.
In its report, titled “Sudan’s Southern Kordofan Problem: The Next Darfur?” the International Crisis Group stresses that both the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and SPLM are resorting to ethnic mobilization in preparation for the treaty-mandated 2009 elections.
Both SPLM and NCP exploit the racial divide between Arabs, Nuba and Southerners to the detriment of other political modalities, the report suggests. This makes ethnic reconciliation difficult even as divisions emerge within ethnic groups between political elites and local youth leaders.
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS AMONG THE MISSERIYA
ICG’s report chronicles the rise of grassroots youth opposition movements among Misseriya in urban communities of western Kordofan.
An organization called Shamam, which is the Arabic acronym for Free Forum of the People of the Areas of Misseriya, took shape after Sudan dissolved the state government of West Kordofan. The group is not an armed opposition movement, according to ICG, but intelligence and security services nevertheless associated it with the “Tora Bora,” the name used to describe Darfur insurgents.
Shamam has cooperated with a group called Youth, which organized a council of 50 major towns and large villages.
ICG goes so far as to suggest that Youth enjoys widespread political support and functions as a social organ and mechanism for conflict resolution: “In mid-2007, Youth tried to address the conflict between its tribes and the Ngok Dinka of Abyei through shared cultural and social activities. Misseriya youth from Al-Muglad and Al-Fula were to visit Abyei town and other Dinka villages for dances and sports. It was hoped this could help bridge the trust gap … However, the events did not take place, because the Ngok Dinka was suspicious of Youth.”
“The NCP has spent much money on people who did not fight the war, and we who fought it got false promises,” a youth leader told ICG in February 2008.
DECAY OF PATRONAGE ARRANGEMENTS
Southern Kordofan’s Misseriya tribes received particular support from Sudan’s government during Sadiq Al-Mahdi’s rule as prime minister (1986-1989), due to many Misseriya’s Umma Party and Ansar affiliations. When the current ruling NCP party came to power in 1989, they tried to strengthen their own ties among the Misseriya.
One point raised in the report is that the Misseriya’s current amirs, who came to power when NCP reorganized the native administration system, were never fully in control after they took over from the traditional oumdas and nazirs.
The new leaders helped establish Popular Defence Forces militias, which benefited from personal connections to current Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, according to an ICG interview with an ex-PDF sector commander. A close friend of Bashir, a Misseriya Humur named Ghalyoun, guided the first PDF camp in Kadugli. Another PDF group, which operated along the railway line to Wau, was led by Ibrahim Shams el-Deen, whose widow is now Bashir’s second wife.
“By sub-dividing the native administrations, the government established a new cadre of leaders, loyal to the NCP, in place of the traditional leadership affiliated with the Umma Party. This also facilitated establishment of the first PDF training camps in South Kordofan,” argues ICG. “However, the inexperienced cadres were unable to provide guidance on fundamental issues affecting their tribes such as conflict resolution, peace dividends and sharing oil wealth.”
With their wartime support now eroded, PDF militias recently went a year and a half without pay, more than 14,000 temporarily defected to SPLA in 2007 and now Youth leaders are beginning to forge their own alliances with PDF, according to ICG.
“At the beginning of 2007, secret meetings between Youth and young Misseriya leaders in the PDF led to an agreement that the PDF would be the movement’s military backbone. But this has not translated into violent action,” says the report.
In response to demands from youth leaders, President Bashir visited the area in June 2007.
NUBA FRUSTRATIONS
Nuba communities have a strained relationship with both SPLM and NCP party leaderships. The Nuba were represented by SPLM at the peace talks that led to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, but many are dissatisfied with the outcome of the negotiations and the current political outlook, citing grievances over land reparations, migration routes, lack of development and deliberate undercounting in the April 2008 census.
A number of resistance movement leaders cited by ICG in its section on “risk of new insurgency” among the Nuba are actually Arabs with former PDF ties or suspected ties to the government. The report acknowledges that “the security situation in the Nuba Mountains improved dramatically after the 2002 ceasefire agreement.”
Despite hard-to-assess speculations about which groups might be significant instigators of resistance, ICG reveals underlying grievances and recent developments at the state level.
According to the report, Southern Kordofan awarded development project contracts to companies reportedly affiliated with Sudan’s security and intelligence apparatus without proper tendering procedures. “Only 30-40 percent of the 115 contracts signed under the initiative of SPLM Governor Galab have been implemented three years after the CPA was signed.”
ICG argues that most state finance allocations “either do not arrive or are not spent in the state. More than 70 percent of the budget stays in Khartoum, without reaching the state treasury.” In September 2008, serious disagreements led NCP Governor Omer Suleiman to close the finance ministry and fire its SPLM minister.
The report recommends that donors provide technical support for administrative integration of former SPLM-held areas into the state government. “Prevention of a new conflict in Southern Kordofan needs to be placed prominently on both national and international agendas,” it concludes.
(ST)